


Hard Way Home

by Onceyourempire



Category: Red Dead Redemption (Video Games)
Genre: Gen, Spoilers for Strange Man side mission in RDR1, Wolf's Head Zine
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-08-15
Updated: 2019-08-15
Packaged: 2020-09-03 05:48:02
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,913
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20259895
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Onceyourempire/pseuds/Onceyourempire
Summary: There is a kind of peace in death, in silence, in companionship.There is a kind of peace to be found out here, in the dust and dry grasses.It is worth stealing, even if it wasn't meant to be yours.





	Hard Way Home

**Author's Note:**

> This was my piece for the Wolf's Head fanzine, which came out today!! There's still some digital copies available (https://gumroad.com/l/rdrzinedigital) until 8/16/2019 at midnight pst!! It's a gorgeous thing that the mods have put together and I'm really happy and honored that I was able to participate!
> 
> The theme I had in mind while writing was peace and the various versions of it I found in-game.

+++

The morning is misty when Arthur sets out from camp. He has a few things on his list — bounty he picked up a few days ago, herbs for horse medicine, fresh meat for the camp — but none of them is really more urgent than the others so he lets the path lead him towards where his bounty was last seen and if he sees anything more interesting or pressing on the way he’ll change course. He finds as he grows older he does this more and more, the wandering. Everything at home is so pressed and anxious that getting out on the road alone and doing jobs and meeting people has become peaceful instead of boring. The little moments like this bring him joy. He feels...something. Longing? Not loneliness, not quite, but a feeling like he's picking up bits and pieces of a life that isn’t really his, moments that aren’t meant to last. He doesn’t hate it. 

The sun peeks over the horizon, tinting the mist orange and red and pink, and Arthur smiles.

It’s not until late morning that he spots the deer carefully picking its way through the meadow on the edge of a treeline. A doe. Arthur almost reaches back for his bow but thinks better of it — where there’s a doe there may be a stag and it’s better for both the deer and the camp to get a stag. He hops off his horse and crouches in the long grass. He has to shift to get downwind but thankfully the doe doesn’t notice him as she sniffs for something to eat.

Once he feels prepared to give chase, he whistles. The doe’s head snaps up to look at him before sprinting away into the trees. Arthur runs after her, making sure to keep close enough to see her but far enough that if he drops she won’t be able to see him. His lungs burn. His lips are chapped. His holster slaps his thigh in time to his stride.

The two of them, man and beast, burst out of the forest to a view Arthur wishes he had his camera to capture. The land drops beneath them and rolls out into other meadow, filled with the doe’s herd. The morning dew hasn’t burned off here yet and it sparkles and throws light into Arthur’s eyes. The sun is behind the herd, throwing their shadows long before him in haunting lines. It’s beautiful. It’s unnerving. The doe leaps down to her family without a care for the scene she’s interrupting. The deer shuffle nervously at her arrival, making to run.  
He doesn’t waste time before throwing himself to ground. For a painfully long second, he stifles his breath. 

The deer settle. Arthur begins to breathe again.

When he peeks back up the scene is less tense. The shadows seem softer. He draws his bow quietly and chooses a nearby stag. Arthur whistles once more and this time he draws and releases before the herd runs away. It doesn’t matter where they’re heading now — he has his prize. He picks his way carefully down the slick grass to the fallen stag. The pelt is beautiful and the horns are well grown in. An older stag, by the looks of him, with a solid few years under his build. Arthur lays a hand on the stag’s still warm side. He thinks his thanks to it for its life, what its been forced to give. It would feel strange to say aloud for a few reasons: the quiet air, the deaf ears of the dead animal underneath his palm, the disquiet in his own heart. Instead of saying anything, he draws his knife and starts to work. 

The sun grows high in the sky and starts to beat down on his shoulders as he skins the stag and takes all he can carry from the body. He can feel sweat in the hairs on the back of his neck but it isn’t uncomfortable. It’s hard work. It’s good work. He looks up and wipes his forehead before he can remember the blood on his hands. The meadow is still beautiful even in the afternoon. There’s a light breeze stirring the trees. The birds chatter and scold each other far away in the forest. Arthur is fairly certain he can spot ginseng on the right edge of the grass. He bows over the stag again and quickly finishes up. 

He tries to take whatever he can, whatever can be useful. Charles had mentioned the practice in reference to buffalo once and it had stuck with Arthur ever since. He tries to apply it to every animal he kills. It’s both practical and compassionate as an idea but it also serves the purpose of letting Arthur do a hard long work that takes his mind off any troubles for a while. His neck, shoulders, and back ache once he’s done. He picks the ginseng quickly and trudges back to his horse, who nudges Arthur’s bloody face affectionately and takes the pelt and meat with good grace.

Arthur checks the sun one more time as he splashes his hands and face clean in a creek just down the road. He may not get home tonight, not if he’s going to bag this bounty and dig up the other ingredients for the medicine. Nothing he can do about that now. He mounts up again. He tilts his face to the sun and closes his eyes for just a second, long enough to appreciate the warmth but not long enough to get the colors behind his eyelids.

The road stretches on, twisting up the hill. Arthur follows, singing gently under his breath.

+++

John can’t remember where he knows the Strange Man from. It scratches under his skin to think about it. He wakes from dreams he barely remembers with that face hovering on the edges of his vision. He hates it. He hates the Strange Man.

(And deeper than that, John thinks he fears the Strange Man. He is unknowable and familiar, a stranger and a face known long ago. The memory of him wriggles constantly out of John’s grasping hands and it makes him afraid. Fear makes him angry. So he hates instead.)

But the Strange Man asks him a favor, and John is curious, so he goes.

He’s done a lot of bad shit in his life. He’s kind of doing bad shit right now, working under the chafing rule of the government men to keep his family safe. John does his best to do good where he can anyway, a tipping of the scales to make up for his fucked up life. A man about to make the biggest mistake of his life, hurting a wife who loves him? John wonders if the Strange Man had known that particular story would get his attention. 

He stumbles upon the man again, poking at a fire even in his layers of suit and vest and shirt. It’s been a long ride, a few days, and the quiet scene around the two of them is almost enough to get John to relax. The Strange Man raises his face to look up at John with an amused tilt of the head and John tenses his shoulders unconsciously. 

The next favor is just protecting a nun and her money. John doesn’t really care for God either way, so he has no real reason to go. He feels the calm eyes of the Strange Man like heat on the back of his neck as he rides towards Las Hermanas anyway, like the force of an unseen hand pushing him towards a destined point. 

(John doesn’t care for God, but he isn’t sure the apathy goes both ways.)

Mother Superior isn’t sure either. Her cyclical talk about God watches over His folk, they need help, no that’s not proof that God isn’t watching, they know God is watching because John is there -- it’s exhausting. He drops money into her bucket. Just because God may not be watching doesn’t mean the Strange Man isn’t. Not that he needs the motivation to aid her, but the image of that neutral expression flashing in his mind’s eye certainly helps.

The Strange Man’s face keeps lurking in the corners of John’s mind as he rides across the rolling slopes of dust. It bothers him in an almost physical sense, a piece of food stuck in his back teeth, grit at the toe of his boot. He can’t remember the Strange Man’s name or why he knows his face. His dreams are haunted and fitful, reliving memories he didn’t know he had of a painting in an abandoned cabin, glimpses out of the corner of his eye a man in the mirror that isn’t John, pages written in a journal long lost in some corner of his home. By the time he meets the Strange Man again, John is at the end of his rope.

“This is a fine place.” The Strange Man says. John gets a taste in his mouth like blood. He gets scared, so he gets angry. He only gets angrier as the Strange Man talks circles around him about things he thinks John won’t understand. The Strange Man, breaking the seemingly set rules of every conversation they’ve had before, is the first to leave.

John draws his gun and fires. 

The Strange Man keeps walking away. John knows he didn’t miss because he doesn’t miss, not at this range. He gets scared, more now, but he stops being angry. He misses the first couple of times he tries to holster his gun before finally slotting it away in its place.

It’s quiet after that. For all the Strange Man has and hasn’t said, he didn’t lie when he said it was beautiful here. A fine place.In the void of the unknowable, it’s peaceful here. Calm. A rabbit runs across his vision to the right. If John was a better artist, or in a better mood, he might try and sketch the landscape. Maybe capture the Strange Man’s likeness. 

Instead he stands there for longer than he needs to, in the wake of his last encounter with the Strange Man. 

Later, he comes across another rabbit, struggling to breathe. It looks like it got knocked aside hard by a passing rider. John snaps its neck efficiently and its body slumps in relief. There is a kind of peace in death, he thinks, and in his mind’s eye the Strange Man tilts his head, amused.

+++

It doesn’t ever really get quiet in the camp. There’s always someone getting up to something somewhere. It’s kind of a roulette of who it could be, depending on the night or the festivities or the defeats of the day. It usually isn’t John anymore, now that he’s expected to be a family man and settle down and be more of a responsible hand for the gang. It’s not usually Arthur anymore either despite his wild-eyed moments. Hell, Arthur isn’t usually around these days at all, off doing little errands and big jobs that add up to filling all the hours of the day. When he does make time to come home and drop whatever it is he’s picked up off, he’s certainly not making time for John.

He makes time for John’s family above almost everyone else -- bringing Jack penny dreadfuls he finds and keeping an eye on him so Abigail can have a breather -- but John’s lucky if he gets a glance or a harsh fistful of words. John tries not to let the his bitterness choke him because he gets it. He knows he did wrong, knows he specifically burned his brother worse than anyone but Abigail. He’s spent a lot of time trying to make up for it and it will never be enough.

That doesn't mean he doesn't miss the old ease of their relationship. When they were the only sons in the family, trying to fit into shoes too big for them, it was comfortable. They trusted each other. They were halves of a troublesome whole. Now it's just -- John feels Arthur's absence keenly. 

There are moments when John sees a glimpse again of their old ways. Once, when John was keeping watch and looking out from their hilltop campsite, Arthur decided to head out towards town on a short cut. The short cut was straight down which normally would not have been an issue for the surefooted Arthur. John watched, struggling to keep a straight face, as Arthur slipped on a loose rock and skidded all the way down, cussing up a storm the entire way. He had leaned over to see if Arthur had survived the fall and locked eyes with him as Arthur stood and dusted himself off angrily. Arthur had shrugged and smiled when John hadn't been able to keep his laughter in any longer.

"You alive?" John had called down. Arthur had made a rude gesture in response. For a second, they weren't fighting as gang members, but bickering like brothers. It had faded the second Arthur had strode off and John had settled his back against the tree again. It had been...John would hesitate to call it ‘nice’, maybe, but it had felt good.

There’s also when Arthur had saved his life from the wolves. Yes, bitching and moaning and yelling the whole way, but he had come for John when he could have easily left him to rot. Maybe he did it for Jack and Abigail but John wasn't so sure. He hadn't been alert for a few days afterwards, a fevered infection burning through his system and leaving him weak, but he still sort of remembered Arthur standing in the doorway, silhouetted in white light of sun reflecting off snow. Watching over him maybe. Possibly just making sure he didn't fall out of bed and hurt himself worse than he already was. Hell, maybe John had just dreamt it. It wouldn't be impossible, his brain struggling to find something to hold onto, to make up any reason why maybe Arthur still cared about him at all. John ignores the possibility though. He has enough shit to go through in his day to day without making the sharp pain of Arthur's scorn an unending certainty instead of a passing storm.

If it is just a passing storm, it's been a long one. He will never admit it but the hard words and glares are fraying John's nerves.

Tonight, it's about as quiet as it gets. Javier is playing his guitar and chatting with someone across camp while he does it. Jack has managed to beg borrow and steal a later bedtime and is holding court among the women, talking about whatever comes to his mind. Dutch is in his tent, flaps thrown open to welcome the night air. Most everyone is in a good mood.

John just got back from his watch. He's tired, hungry, and just generally angry. He wants to eat whatever is left in the pot and turn in and that’s it.

Until he sees Arthur sitting on a log that someone pulled over, half empty bottle shoved into the dirt next to him, journal balanced on his knees. John freezes, afraid to make the wrong move and startle Arthur off. Arthur looks up anyway. He doesn’t smile but Arthur doesn’t smile a whole lot anyway. His face twitches in a way that could be surprise or annoyance. John can’t tell which one it is but when Arthur tilts his head and jerks it to indicate the empty space beside him, it seems like a good sign.

“I’m just - I’m gonna get soup.”

Arthur nods and there is a smile this time, one John’s seen a hundred times before, fond and exasperated all at once. John decidedly does not scamper away and back before settling down next to Arthur. Arthur is already focused back on his journal, gently sketching something John can’t see in the firelight. 

The conversations on the other side of camp fade to a comfortable buzzing sound. The fire near them crackles and pops, casting both of their hands with stark shadows where the knuckles block light. John feels his muscles relax. When he glances over to Arthur, Arthur’s shoulders are a gentle curve, sloping towards the journal and whatever he’s working on. John’s spoon clinks. It feels like home. 

John finishes eating but isn’t ready to leave the moment yet, so he drops his bowl on the ground and puts his chin in his hand to watch his son gesture excitedly to a laughing Karen. He thinks he’s happy. Arthur’s knee bumps into his and when John looks over Arthur is still looking down but smiling at his journal. John takes a risk to gesture for the bottle and Arthur passes it over. John takes a long pull and passes the bottle back. It’s whiskey and the burn down his throat feels like renewal. 

Tomorrow will come and nothing will have changed, more likely than not. Arthur will have few words for him outside of biting insults. John will feel like an orphan in his own family again. Arthur flips pages and starts to write. John rummages for a cigarette and lights it, offering one over to Arthur, who takes it with a nod and another bump of their legs.

John smiles and breathes out smoke. He’ll take any moment of peace he can get.

+++


End file.
